Kale who is also Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) also warned that if proper steps are not taken, the country may slide back into recession as the 0.55 percentage growth experienced in the second quarter was fragile.
Kale who spoke at a press conference on Wednesday in Abuja said Nigerians are not yet feeling the real impact of the positive economic growth rate on their lives because of to the structure of the economy which is still largely driven by oil.
“There is growth but there is a problem with the distribution of growth across the country.’’
“Recession is not about the price of your goods, not whether unemployment is going up or down, not whether you have quality education; it’s purely your gross domestic product.
“Your outputs of goods and services in the economy are going down and the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) is an accumulation of 46 different economic activities in Nigeria and the overall number.
“Whether positive or negative will determine whether you are in recession or out of recession.
“Now, within those 46 activities, some sectors will do very well and will be positive, some will do badly, some will do worse and some will stay the same way they are.’’
He explained that “there are different stages Nigeria must go through before the masses will feel the effects of going out of recession.
“Out of recession is the first step which is very important then the country can talk of economic recovery which is going back to where Nigeria was before the recession.”
Saying that the country must not relax because the GDP is still on the negative side, the Statistician General said it is important for Nigeria to maintain and improve the tempo of economic activities so that it will not relapse into recession.
and then